Magazine Collage Picture Frames

The wonderful Tinkerlab is hosting another creative challenge today! Over 20 creative bloggers are taking part and there was just one, simple instruction…. “make something using old magazines”…that’s it!This was such a wonderful challenge to set as it involves recycling old materials which are abundant at this time of year, with all of the Christmas catalogues dropping through the postbox each morning!

Our real challenge was narrowing this down to just one idea, and in the end we made a couple of different things! The other idea will be up later on in the week. For this challenge we decided to make some beautiful picture frames using a large magazine collage as the base. I LOVE collage and think it’s one of the most simple and stunning art forms there is! All ages and abilities can participate and it’s very open-ended.

We found a gorgeous Cath Kidston catalogue (who can resist those patterns?!) and started by tearing the pages with plenty of colour and pattern into long strips.

Then the girls started to paste them onto a piece of a cardboard box, spreading PVA (runny) glue all over it with paintbrushes.

They laid down the pieces as close to each other as possible and my only intervention was to suggest that they try and hide the cardboard completely, which became a fun challenge!

Once it was completely covered and any small areas were patched up with little scraps, they spread more PVA glue over the entire piece, to seal it and make it dry with a shiny finish.

The finished magazine collage was beautiful in its own right and we nearly left it at that! Here’s a close up of just one little section, lovely!The next day I drew a couple of simple frame shapes on the back of the (now) hardened, magazine collage cut them out with scissors.

Et voila! Beautiful, colourful, patterned and bright picture frames ready to stick over the top of a piece of art work or a favourite photo! These would make a lovely gift for a family member with a photo of your gorgeous children in this Christmas.I stuck some pieces of thin, magnetic tape onto the back of one of the frames and put it on the fridge. It would make an easily changed instant frame for the daily colouring or painting produced by your little one!

I have to say though, while I was cutting out the frames, Cakie was busy asking me for sticky tape and attaching strips of the leftover cardboard collage together. What she ended up creating, all by herself, was far more creative and exciting to me than the frames! “This is a bridge Mummy, for my fingers to walk across the river!” Ahhhh, wonderful, independent creative construction work! It’s the first time she has ever produced something like this and I’m very excited for the next few months of creativity ahead!

To check out all of the other amazing ideas that have come from this one simple task, check out the list of blogs below!